Fieldnotes #04
Design system governance, components vs patterns, and too much coffee.
Heavy governance week. Working through how to structure contribution to the design system — who can raise issues, how proposals get reviewed, when things get merged vs. documented as patterns. It’s the kind of work that feels slow in the moment but pays massive dividends later.
Had a good conversation about the distinction between components and patterns — a component is a UI building block, a pattern is a documented solution to a recurring design problem. Sometimes they overlap, but conflating them leads to a component library that grows without purpose.
The festive season brings with it an unreasonable number of coffee meetings and I have accepted my fate.